nce the while we walked a hundred yards, and then, having left
his wife and mother-in-law out of ear-shot, abruptly began the tale of
his mishaps. As I conjectured, he had totally failed in his attempt to
mollify his father, who was furious at his temerity in appearing before
him, and whose rage redoubled when he heard of his ill-omened marriage.
Unfortunately for Van Haubitz, the jeweller and some other tradesmen at
Frankfort, so soon as they learned his departure, had forwarded their
accounts to the care of the Amsterdam firm; and, although his father had
not the remotest intention of paying them, he was incensed in the
extreme at the slur thus cast upon his house and name. In short, the
unlucky artilleryman at once saw he had no chance of a single kreuzer,
or of the slightest countenance from his father. His applications to his
brothers, and one or two to more distant relatives, were equally
unsuccessful. All were disgusted at his irregularities, angry at his
marriage, incredulous of his promises of reform; and, after passing a
miserable month in Amsterdam, he set out to accompany his wife to
Vienna, whither she was compelled to repair under pain of fine and
forfeiture of her engagement. Although living with rigid economy--on
bread and water, as Van Haubitz expressed it--their finances had been
utterly consumed by their stay in the expensive Dutch capital, and it
was only by disposing of every trinket and superfluity (and of
necessaries too, I feared, when I remembered the slender baggage that
came up with them from the boat) that they had procured the means of
travelling, in the cheapest and most humble manner, and with the
disheartening certainty of arriving penniless at Vienna. Van Haubitz
told me all this, and many other details, with an air of gloomy
despondency. He was hopeless, heart-broken, desperate; and certain
circumstances of his position, which by some would have been held an
alleviation, aggravated it in his eyes. He said little of his wife; but,
from what escaped him, I easily gathered that she had shown strength of
mind, good feeling and affection for him, and was willing to struggle by
his side for a scanty and hard-earned subsistence. His selfish cares and
irritable mood prevented his appreciating or returning her attachment,
and he looked upon her as a clog and an encumbrance, without which he
might again rise in the world. He had always entertained a confident
expectation of enriching himself by mar